OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Variational Bayesian Framework for Advanced Image Generation with Domain-Related Variables
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Deep generative models (DGMs) and their conditional counterparts provide a powerful ability for general-purpose generative modeling of data distributions. However, it remains challenging for existing methods to address advanced conditional generative problems without annotations, which can enable multiple applications like image-to-image translation and image editing. We present a unified Bayesian framework for such problems, which introduces an inference stage on latent variables within the learning process. In particular, we propose a variational Bayesian image translation network (VBITN) that enables multiple image translation and editing tasks. Comprehensive experiments show the effectiveness of our method on unsupervised image-to-image translation, and demonstrate the novel advanced capabilities for semantic editing and mixed domain translation.
Parameterized Complexity Classification for Interval Constraints
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2023
Year: 2023

Constraint satisfaction problems form a nicely behaved class of problems that lends itself to complexity classification results. From the point of view of parameterized complexity, a natural task is to classify the parameterized complexity of MinCSP problems parameterized by the number of unsatisfied constraints. In other words, we ask whether we can delete at most $k$ constraints, where $k$ is the parameter, to get a satisfiable instance. In this work, we take a step towards classifying the parameterized complexity for an important infinite-domain CSP: Allen's interval algebra (IA). This CSP has closed intervals with rational endpoints as domain values and employs a set $A$ of 13 basic comparison relations such as ``precedes'' or ``during'' for relating intervals. IA is a highly influential and well-studied formalism within AI and qualitative reasoning that has numerous applications in, for instance, planning, natural language processing and molecular biology. We provide an FPT vs. W[1]-hard dichotomy for MinCSP$(Γ)$ for all $Γ\subseteq A$. IA is sometimes extended with unions of the relations in $A$ or first-order definable relations over $A$, but extending our results to these cases would require first solving the parameterized complexity of Directed Symmetric Multicut, which is a notorious open problem. Already in this limited setting, we uncover connections to new variants of graph cut and separation problems. This includes hardness proofs for simultaneous cuts or feedback arc set problems in directed graphs, as well as new tractable cases with algorithms based on the recently introduced flow augmentation technique. Given the intractability of MinCSP$(A)$ in general, we then consider (parameterized) approximation algorithms and present a factor-$2$ fpt-approximation algorithm.
Failure-Sentient Composition For Swarm-Based Drone Services
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2023
Year: 2023

We propose a novel failure-sentient framework for swarm-based drone delivery services. The framework ensures that those drones that experience a noticeable degradation in their performance (called soft failure) and which are part of a swarm, do not disrupt the successful delivery of packages to a consumer. The framework composes a weighted continual federated learning prediction module to accurately predict the time of failures of individual drones and uptime after failures. These predictions are used to determine the severity of failures at both the drone and swarm levels. We propose a speed-based heuristic algorithm with lookahead optimization to generate an optimal set of services considering failures. Experimental results on real datasets prove the efficiency of our proposed approach in terms of prediction accuracy, delivery times, and execution times.
Towards Optimal Serverless Function Scaling in Edge Computing Network
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2023
Year: 2023

Serverless computing has emerged as a new execution model which gained a lot of attention in cloud computing thanks to the latest advances in containerization technologies. Recently, serverless has been adopted at the edge, where it can help overcome heterogeneity issues, constrained nature and dynamicity of edge devices. Due to the distributed nature of edge devices, however, the scaling of serverless functions presents a major challenge. We address this challenge by studying the optimality of serverless function scaling. To this end, we propose Semi-Markov Decision Process-based (SMDP) theoretical model, which yields optimal solutions by solving the serverless function scaling problem as a decision making problem. We compare the SMDP solution with practical, monitoring-based heuristics. We show that SMDP can be effectively used in edge computing networks, and in combination with monitoring-based approaches also in real-world implementations.
WinDB: HMD-free and Distortion-free Panoptic Video Fixation Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

To date, the widely adopted way to perform fixation collection in panoptic video is based on a head-mounted display (HMD), where users' fixations are collected while wearing an HMD to explore the given panoptic scene freely. However, this widely-used data collection method is insufficient for training deep models to accurately predict which regions in a given panoptic are most important when it contains intermittent salient events. The main reason is that there always exist "blind zooms" when using HMD to collect fixations since the users cannot keep spinning their heads to explore the entire panoptic scene all the time. Consequently, the collected fixations tend to be trapped in some local views, leaving the remaining areas to be the "blind zooms". Therefore, fixation data collected using HMD-based methods that accumulate local views cannot accurately represent the overall global importance - the main purpose of fixations - of complex panoptic scenes. To conquer, this paper introduces the auxiliary window with a dynamic blurring (WinDB) fixation collection approach for panoptic video, which doesn't need HMD and is able to well reflect the regional-wise importance degree. Using our WinDB approach, we have released a new PanopticVideo-300 dataset, containing 300 panoptic clips covering over 225 categories. Specifically, since using WinDB to collect fixations is blind zoom free, there exists frequent and intensive "fixation shifting" - a very special phenomenon that has long been overlooked by the previous research - in our new set. Thus, we present an effective fixation shifting network (FishNet) to conquer it. All these new fixation collection tool, dataset, and network could be very potential to open a new age for fixation-related research and applications in 360o environments.
Design and Operation of Autonomous Wheelchair Towing Robot
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2023
Year: 2023

In this study, a new concept of a wheelchair-towing robot for the facile electrification of manual wheelchairs is introduced. The development of this concept includes the design of towing robot hardware and an autonomous driving algorithm to ensure the safe transportation of patients to their intended destinations inside the hospital. We developed a novel docking mechanism to facilitate easy docking and separation between the towing robot and the manual wheelchair, which is connected to the front caster wheel of the manual wheelchair. The towing robot has a mecanum wheel drive, enabling the robot to move with a high degree of freedom in the standalone driving mode while adhering to kinematic constraints in the docking mode. Our novel towing robot features a camera sensor that can observe the ground ahead which allows the robot to autonomously follow color-coded wayfinding lanes installed in hospital corridors. This study introduces dedicated image processing techniques for capturing the lanes and control algorithms for effectively tracing a path to achieve autonomous path following. The autonomous towing performance of our proposed platform was validated by a real-world experiment in which a hospital environment with colored lanes was created.
A Deep Learning Approach for Generating Soft Range Information from RF Data
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Radio frequency (RF)-based techniques are widely adopted for indoor localization despite the challenges in extracting sufficient information from measurements. Soft range information (SRI) offers a promising alternative for highly accurate localization that gives all probable range values rather than a single estimate of distance. We propose a deep learning approach to generate accurate SRI from RF measurements. In particular, the proposed approach is implemented by a network with two neural modules and conducts the generation directly from raw data. Extensive experiments on a case study with two public datasets are conducted to quantify the efficiency in different indoor localization tasks. The results show that the proposed approach can generate highly accurate SRI, and significantly outperforms conventional techniques in both non-line-of-sight (NLOS) detection and ranging error mitigation.
An Ising-like model for language evolution
Venue: arXiv cs.MA 2023
Year: 2023

I propose a novel Ising-like model of language evolution. In a simple way, Ising-like models represent the countervailing tendencies towards convergence and change present in language evolution. In the ordinary Ising-model, a node on a graph, in this case representing a language speaker, interacts with all its neighbors. In contrast, in the model proposed here, a node only interacts with the neighboring node whose state-vector is most similar to its own. This reflects the tendency of people to interact with others who speak a similar language. Unlike the ordinary Ising model, which tends towards language continua, this new model allows language boundaries.
Optimizing National Security Strategies through LLM-Driven Artificial Intelligence Integration
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

As artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to advance, we must understand their strategic importance in national security. This paper focuses on unique AI applications in the military, emphasizes strategic imperatives for success, and aims to rekindle excitement about AI's role in national security. We will examine the United States progress in AI and ML from a military standpoint, discuss the importance of securing these technologies from adversaries, and explore the challenges and risks associated with their integration. Finally, we will highlight the strategic significance of AI to national security and a set of strategic imperatives for military leaders and policymakers
Perception, performance, and detectability of conversational artificial intelligence across 32 university courses
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

The emergence of large language models has led to the development of powerful tools such as ChatGPT that can produce text indistinguishable from human-generated work. With the increasing accessibility of such technology, students across the globe may utilize it to help with their school work -- a possibility that has sparked discussions on the integrity of student evaluations in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). To date, it is unclear how such tools perform compared to students on university-level courses. Further, students' perspectives regarding the use of such tools, and educators' perspectives on treating their use as plagiarism, remain unknown. Here, we compare the performance of ChatGPT against students on 32 university-level courses. We also assess the degree to which its use can be detected by two classifiers designed specifically for this purpose. Additionally, we conduct a survey across five countries, as well as a more in-depth survey at the authors' institution, to discern students' and educators' perceptions of ChatGPT's use. We find that ChatGPT's performance is comparable, if not superior, to that of students in many courses. Moreover, current AI-text classifiers cannot reliably detect ChatGPT's use in school work, due to their propensity to classify human-written answers as AI-generated, as well as the ease with which AI-generated text can be edited to evade detection. Finally, we find an emerging consensus among students to use the tool, and among educators to treat this as plagiarism. Our findings offer insights that could guide policy discussions addressing the integration of AI into educational frameworks.
Acquiring Frame Element Knowledge with Deep Metric Learning for Semantic Frame Induction
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

The semantic frame induction tasks are defined as a clustering of words into the frames that they evoke, and a clustering of their arguments according to the frame element roles that they should fill. In this paper, we address the latter task of argument clustering, which aims to acquire frame element knowledge, and propose a method that applies deep metric learning. In this method, a pre-trained language model is fine-tuned to be suitable for distinguishing frame element roles through the use of frame-annotated data, and argument clustering is performed with embeddings obtained from the fine-tuned model. Experimental results on FrameNet demonstrate that our method achieves substantially better performance than existing methods.
Control of a simulated MRI scanner with deep reinforcement learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a highly versatile and widely used clinical imaging tool. The content of MRI images is controlled by an acquisition sequence, which coordinates the timing and magnitude of the scanner hardware activations, which shape and coordinate the magnetisation within the body, allowing a coherent signal to be produced. The use of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to control this process, and determine new and efficient acquisition strategies in MRI, has not been explored. Here, we take a first step into this area, by using DRL to control a virtual MRI scanner, and framing the problem as a game that aims to efficiently reconstruct the shape of an imaging phantom using partially reconstructed magnitude images. Our findings demonstrate that DRL successfully completed two key tasks: inducing the virtual MRI scanner to generate useful signals and interpreting those signals to determine the phantom's shape. This proof-of-concept study highlights the potential of DRL in autonomous MRI data acquisition, shedding light on the suitability of DRL for complex tasks, with limited supervision, and without the need to provide human-readable outputs.
One-Shot Strategically Deconflicted Route and Operational Volume Generation for Urban Air Mobility Operations
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2023
Year: 2023

In the UAM space, strategic deconfliction provides an all-essential layer to airspace automation by providing safe, pre-emptive deconfliction or assignment of airspace resources to airspace users pre-flight. Strategic deconfliction approaches provide an elegant solution to pre-flight deconfliction operations. This overall creates safer and more efficient airspace and reduces the workload on controllers. In this research, we propose a method that constructs routes between start and end nodes in airspace, assigns a contract of operational volumes (OVs) and ensures that these OVs are sufficiently deconflicted against static no-fly zones and OVs of other airspace users. Our approach uses the A* optimal cost path algorithm to generate the shortest routes between the origin and destination. We present a method for generating OVs based on the distribution of aircraft positions from simulated flights; volumes are constructed such that this distribution is conservatively described.
When Does Aggregating Multiple Skills with Multi-Task Learning Work? A Case Study in Financial NLP
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

Multi-task learning (MTL) aims at achieving a better model by leveraging data and knowledge from multiple tasks. However, MTL does not always work -- sometimes negative transfer occurs between tasks, especially when aggregating loosely related skills, leaving it an open question when MTL works. Previous studies show that MTL performance can be improved by algorithmic tricks. However, what tasks and skills should be included is less well explored. In this work, we conduct a case study in Financial NLP where multiple datasets exist for skills relevant to the domain, such as numeric reasoning and sentiment analysis. Due to the task difficulty and data scarcity in the Financial NLP domain, we explore when aggregating such diverse skills from multiple datasets with MTL can work. Our findings suggest that the key to MTL success lies in skill diversity, relatedness between tasks, and choice of aggregation size and shared capacity. Specifically, MTL works well when tasks are diverse but related, and when the size of the task aggregation and the shared capacity of the model are balanced to avoid overwhelming certain tasks.
Does ChatGPT have Theory of Mind?
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to understand human thinking and decision-making, an ability that plays a crucial role in social interaction between people, including linguistic communication. This paper investigates to what extent recent Large Language Models in the ChatGPT tradition possess ToM. We posed six well-known problems that address biases in human reasoning and decision making to two versions of ChatGPT and we compared the results under a range of prompting strategies. While the results concerning ChatGPT-3 were somewhat inconclusive, ChatGPT-4 was shown to arrive at the correct answers more often than would be expected based on chance, although correct answers were often arrived at on the basis of false assumptions or invalid reasoning.
Learning a Single Convolutional Layer Model for Low Light Image Enhancement
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Low-light image enhancement (LLIE) aims to improve the illuminance of images due to insufficient light exposure. Recently, various lightweight learning-based LLIE methods have been proposed to handle the challenges of unfavorable prevailing low contrast, low brightness, etc. In this paper, we have streamlined the architecture of the network to the utmost degree. By utilizing the effective structural re-parameterization technique, a single convolutional layer model (SCLM) is proposed that provides global low-light enhancement as the coarsely enhanced results. In addition, we introduce a local adaptation module that learns a set of shared parameters to accomplish local illumination correction to address the issue of varied exposure levels in different image regions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method performs favorably against the state-of-the-art LLIE methods in both objective metrics and subjective visual effects. Additionally, our method has fewer parameters and lower inference complexity compared to other learning-based schemes.
Process-To-Text: A Framework for the Quantitative Description of Processes in Natural Language
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

In this paper we present the Process-To-Text (P2T) framework for the automatic generation of textual descriptive explanations of processes. P2T integrates three AI paradigms: process mining for extracting temporal and structural information from a process, fuzzy linguistic protoforms for modelling uncertain terms, and natural language generation for building the explanations. A real use-case in the cardiology domain is presented, showing the potential of P2T for providing natural language explanations addressed to specialists.
Fast Maximal Quasi-clique Enumeration: A Pruning and Branching Co-Design Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2023
Year: 2023

Mining cohesive subgraphs from a graph is a fundamental problem in graph data analysis. One notable cohesive structure is $γ$-quasi-clique (QC), where each vertex connects at least a fraction $γ$ of the other vertices inside. Enumerating maximal $γ$-quasi-cliques (MQCs) of a graph has been widely studied. One common practice of finding all MQCs is to (1) find a set of QCs containing all MQCs and then (2) filter out non-maximal QCs. While quite a few algorithms have been developed (which are branch-and-bound algorithms) for finding a set of QCs that contains all MQCs, all focus on sharpening the pruning techniques and devote little effort to improving the branching part. As a result, they provide no guarantee on pruning branches and all have the worst-case time complexity of $O^*(2^n)$, where $O^*$ suppresses the polynomials and $n$ is the number of vertices in the graph. In this paper, we focus on the problem of finding a set of QCs containing all MQCs but deviate from further sharpening the pruning techniques as existing methods do. We pay attention to both the pruning and branching parts and develop new pruning techniques and branching methods that would suit each other better towards pruning more branches both theoretically and practically. Specifically, we develop a new branch-and-bound algorithm called FastQC based on newly developed pruning techniques and branching methods, which improves the worst-case time complexity to $O^*(α_k^n)$, where $α_k$ is a positive real number strictly smaller than 2. Furthermore, we develop a divide-and-conquer strategy for boosting the performance of FastQC. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on both real and synthetic datasets, and the results show that our algorithms are up to two orders of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art on real datasets.
Message Intercommunication for Inductive Relation Reasoning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2023
Year: 2023

Inductive relation reasoning for knowledge graphs, aiming to infer missing links between brand-new entities, has drawn increasing attention. The models developed based on Graph Inductive Learning, called GraIL-based models, have shown promising potential for this task. However, the uni-directional message-passing mechanism hinders such models from exploiting hidden mutual relations between entities in directed graphs. Besides, the enclosing subgraph extraction in most GraIL-based models restricts the model from extracting enough discriminative information for reasoning. Consequently, the expressive ability of these models is limited. To address the problems, we propose a novel GraIL-based inductive relation reasoning model, termed MINES, by introducing a Message Intercommunication mechanism on the Neighbor-Enhanced Subgraph. Concretely, the message intercommunication mechanism is designed to capture the omitted hidden mutual information. It introduces bi-directed information interactions between connected entities by inserting an undirected/bi-directed GCN layer between uni-directed RGCN layers. Moreover, inspired by the success of involving more neighbors in other graph-based tasks, we extend the neighborhood area beyond the enclosing subgraph to enhance the information collection for inductive relation reasoning. Extensive experiments on twelve inductive benchmark datasets demonstrate that our MINES outperforms existing state-of-the-art models, and show the effectiveness of our intercommunication mechanism and reasoning on the neighbor-enhanced subgraph.